


Jumping off-point

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:58:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam didn't let himself sleep on the flights. If he slept, he'd dream about Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jumping off-point

**Author's Note:**

> Written before the end of season three, my take on Sam getting Dean out of his deal.

Dean opened his eyes to find himself hanging off the side of a cliff from a mass of twisted gray tree roots. He was stark naked, his arms strained to hold his weight, his heart pumped like a jackhammer.

_What the hell?_

He scrabbled desperately in the air with his feet until he hit more of the roots. Then, holding his breath, he looked down. The roots seemed to writhe in and out of the cliff all the way down to where huge waves slammed into its base, sending up fountains of white foam. Further out the sea was calmer, rolling bright green in the sun.

Dean breathed in the wet salty air, blinked a few times and tried to keep his panic under control. A couple of seagulls skimmed the surface of the sea, rose into the air and crossed over his head. Adjusting his grip on the roots, he looked up. Above him the trunk of the tree was gnarled, creeping precariously into the sky at right angles to the cliff, its skeletal arms ending in finger spreads of tattered red flowers.

He felt stretched and strung-out, his arms ached as though he’d been hanging for hours, his body was covered in bleeding scratches, but the air smelled fresh and the tree was alive. The only thing he knew for sure was this _sure as hell_ wasn’t hell. _And if he was alive, then god – was Sam dead?_

The hounds had drawn closer and closer in his last week; howls licking his spine, foul breath on his tongue, invisible nails scratching his skin, a constant headache tearing his skull. When Sam’s head morphed into a hellish mask he’d shut his eyes and willed it away; when Sam was himself his eyes looked sunken, bloodshot, full of the fear that infected them both. With his body Sam had tried to shield Dean from what he couldn’t see or hear. He’d failed, choking on Dean’s name as Dean was dragged from his arms into hell.

_God Sam… what have you done?_ Dean felt like throwing up. Fear flooded his belly and he tried to scramble further up the roots to the base of the tree. His feet slipped and he swung in space for a terrifying moment until he calmed down enough to get his footing back. He closed his eyes and saw nightmare visions of Sam twisting in hell in his place; heard his own voice screaming Sam’s name inside his head.

He looked up again. Above the tree there was another ragged stretch of rock and then a ridge. The ridge flowed down and then up into a much taller clump of land, the rock giving way to trees and grass, and in the distance, just beyond the land’s highest point, was the tall white shape of a lighthouse. His mind filled with flashes of jagged rocks, ghostly wailing figures, but he pushed down the images and the fear and focused on the rock above him. The only way to figure this out, to undo whatever hellish deal Sam had struck, was to get out of here.

++

It took him hours to get around the tree and up about twenty feet of bare rock to the ridge. With no protection for his body he was covered in fresh bruises and sunburned by the time he crawled to the safety of the rocky path at the top. His hands and feet ached from trying to cling to small fissures in the rock, trying to stop himself slipping and crashing into the sea.

He forced himself to climb the path towards the top, his throat aching with thirst, trying to think about one foot in front of the other, and not about Sam. Finally the sun dipped into the sea and the searing heat faded. His sweat dried on his skin as he made it to the cover of scrubby trees that grew higher up the hill. He was just a few yards below the lighthouse when his body could go no further. His legs gave way underneath him, and he sank into the long grass as the last of the sun died, falling into a dreamless sleep.

++

Sam didn’t let himself sleep on the flights. If he slept, he’d dream about Dean.

So LAX to Melbourne was ten hours crammed into a tiny seat, watching terrible movies, a high pitched buzz in his earphones, the man next to him sweating and leaning into his space. Then a three-hour stop in Melbourne – a brutal blast of heat outside the air-conditioned terminal – the sun in his face, trying to distract himself from thinking too much by talking to strangers. Finally a short leg to Auckland, the plane filled with jovial Australians, standing around in the aisles, drinking beer and laughing. Sam watched them, envious.

His eyes ached, his legs ached, his hands still shook a little; his throat was still raw from screaming. His whole body was drugged and heavy with tiredness but he forced himself to stay awake. He drank six beers in the three-hour flight and staggered off the plane drunk, his brain dialed back to a low hum, which was good.

 

All he had was his laptop and duffel, so he went straight through the dinky terminal to customs, got strip searched but didn’t care – too wasted for indignity to touch him – and found himself in the shimmering, subtropical Auckland night. A taxi into town, a cheap hostel for the night, and he’d face his fears in the morning.

 

He woke at two from a predictably bad dream; Dean’s face, white, blood running from his eyes, slippery hands sliding out of Sam’s no matter how hard he tried to grip. So he got up and asked directions to the main bus terminal in town. Walked there and sat in the harsh light of the foyer watching drunk late-night casino patrons stumble past on the street, waiting for the next bus north.

++

Dean woke up with a jolt, light painting the insides of his eyelids red. He tensed and opened his eyes to the blinding searchlight of the lighthouse and the sound of someone stumbling down the hill towards him. He curled his body into a crouch, eyes forward, but scrambling around him in the grass for a weapon, a tree branch, anything.

“Hey, are you alright?”

A woman’s silhouette cut into the light, coming towards him, her head a nimbus of curly hair. Then the light swung away from them and Dean was suddenly blind, the night pitch black and large red spots dancing in his eyes.

“Hey mate,” the woman said mildly, as though trying not to scare him. She stretched out a hand. Her voice was warm and throaty, and Dean’s adrenalin drained away. He took her hand and she pulled him up. “Are you hurt?”

Standing, she was as tall as him. The lighthouse beam swung over them again, but side on it wasn’t so blinding. She looked about his own age, or older, dark skinned, a bit on the plump side, with a mass of black hair.

She grinned, a flash of white teeth, and raised an eyebrow. “Checking me out, bro? You’re not so bad yourself.”

He wanted to grin back, crack a joke, but his vision swam with ghostly figures – _mouths torn open in cries of sadness, fingers tearing at their own skin, the smell of rotting sea water_ – and he swayed and stumbled. She caught him clumsily, bracing an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I–” He pushed her off and stood up.

“Hey man. You’re badly hurt and naked. You need help,” she said in a completely un-hysterical tone, and Dean felt, well, _reassured._ “C’mon. Come with me to my car.” She walked away up the hill and he stumbled after her, around the lighthouse, then up a long path to a gravel car park. She walked slowly, allowing for him, and Dean followed, unable to think of a good reason not to.

There was one car in the car park, and in a sweep of light Dean saw it was a sturdy old car, a make he hadn’t seen.

She opened the passenger side and grabbed a blanket off the back seat, handing it to him. He wrapped it around himself and leaned his weight on the car. His hands were shaking. She fished a half-empty bottle of coke out of the front somewhere and handed it over too.

“All I’ve got, sorry.”

“Thanks,” said Dean, and drank it in one gulp. He forced himself to breath calmly, push down the wailing ghosts, and see only what was there instead.

His eyes had adjusted to the dark. He could see the path to the lighthouse, and beyond it the steep slope he’d climbed that afternoon. He could even see the dark outline of the tree clinging to the side of the cliff. Beyond the tree the waves were black, edged with tiny white curls, phosphorescence. Stars were coming out above them, but they looked wrong, unfamiliar.

The woman sat on the hood of the car and looked out at the view, her long legs in tight jeans splayed on the metal. Dean cleared his throat. “Nice view. You come here a lot?”

She laughed. “Down but not out? Good try mate. What happened to you? What happened to your _clothes?_” Her accent was hard to catch, broad and blurry on the words, and she spoke too quickly.

“I don’t know. I woke up here.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “Well, if you think you need a doctor there’s an all-night clinic an hour or so away. I could take you there, or give you a ride somewhere else. I’m not leaving you like this. Aunty’ll kill me.”

When she fell silent Dean only heard the sound of the sea and the wind in the dark. It didn’t feel like there was anything menacing out there. And it wasn’t like he’d never heard of evil having a pretty face but, _yeah_, she didn’t really seem the evil type.

“Christo.”

She laughed, surprised. _“What?”_

He met the glint of her eyes. “I’m Dean.”

“Tania.”

She reached over and they shook hands. Hers was warm and calloused.

“So, Dean. Can I take you home, or to a doctor?”

 “What I really need is to make a phone call.” Fuck, don’t start thinking about Sam. “And, uh, where are we?”

“Dude. Is this your _stag_ night or something?”

He tried for a jokey tone. “Yeah. Last thing I remember darling, I was blind drunk, and wearing women’s panties.”

Tania grinned. “Ooookay matey, whatever you say. I’ll take you home to Aunty and you can call from there.” She swung down off the hood, cocked her eye at him and swept her arms in a dramatic circle. “You, my friend, are at the very tip of Cape Reinga, looking out at where the mighty Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea.”

“And that is…?”

She looked surprised. “At the top of the North Island.”

“Oh, right. Of course, the North Island,” said Dean.

She looked incredulous. “You’re in New Zealand, Dean. You do know that, right?”

“New Zealand.” _New Zealand?_ He tried to keep his voice normal. “Hobbits.”

“Americans,” she mumbled under her breath. “Did you get mugged, hit on the head?” She slid off the hood and reached her hand out as though to check, but he rubbed his own hand over the back of his head to forestall her.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Jump in the car, I’m taking you straight to the doctor. What’s the last place you remember? Kaitaia? Keri Keri? Whangarei?”

“I remember being in, uh, Kaitaia.” The word sounded different in his mouth.

“Big city? Lots of high rises?”

“Uh–” Dean started, sensing a trap.

She looked at him really hard. _“Darling,”_ and she gave it a nice little sarcastic emphasis, “where did you come from? How did you get here?”

What the hell. He liked her. The world was upside down already. He was upside down on the wrong side of the world.

_Sam. How far away was Sam?_

His fists clenched on the blanket. “Last thing I remember was being dragged into hell by a pack of hounds from a shitty motel room in Raleigh, Mississippi.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Now that I can believe.”

++

Sam woke up, sweating, against the window of the bus. The engine roared under him, jerking and grinding as the driver changed gear, and the sun beat down against his skin. He tugged off his hoodie, the back of it one big wet patch. Yawning, he stumbled into the seat across the aisle away from the sun. The bus was half-empty. He caught the eye of a twelve-year-old girl a few seats ahead and smiled at her until her gaze dropped to his stomach where his t-shirt rode up. He blushed and pulled it down.

They were driving through farmland. Sam saw herds of cows grazing in the distance. The hills were green and gold, with little patches of dark forest dotted everywhere.

He drank the last of his lukewarm water.

He looked at his forearms, expecting to see scratches, fresh blood where Dean had held onto him in his dream, where he’d held onto Dean. They were unmarked. He pushed away the feeling of emptiness, of empty arms. It was only a dream.

++

“Here, honey. Wake up.

Dean dragged his heavy head off his arms where he’d slumped down on the surface of the scratched wooden table. Tania’s aunt, a nice-looking middle-aged woman – rounded and saggy but with glowing dark brown skin and thick black hair – handed him a mug of soup. It smelled amazing.

“Are all the women in your family this beautiful?” he said with a tired grin. She laughed like Missouri, all skepticism and bristle, but then she softened.

“How does anyone resist you, boy?” She sat down with a discreet sigh of heavy nightdress and creak of joints.

“You’d be surprised,” Dean said, applying himself to the soup.

He looked up again when he saw her hands moving. She made the sign of a cross in the air between them. Then she took a pinch of black powder from a tiny bottle around her neck. She carefully placed it on the back of her wrist, and blew it into the air with a puff of breath.

“It’s vege. Homemade. It’ll do you good.” She tapped the little bottle absently, and he had the strong idea there was plenty of the black powder in his soup as well.

“Thanks, Ma’am.” In between mouthfuls he looked around. It was a dark wooden room, the huge old table they sat at down one end and a kitchen bench at the other. In between, a back door led to an open porch filled with mud-covered boots and jackets. Beyond in the light from the window he could make out a dark field.

Tania stood out there, mostly in shadow, talking to a man in pajamas who was even bigger than Sam. Her man, Dean guessed, from the way he kept jerking his head at Dean through the window. Dean was wearing an old pair of jeans and a shirt. They were way too big for him and he wondered if they belonged to Tania’s guy.

As he watched Tania threw up her hands in mock despair and grabbed the guy’s head, smacking a kiss on his lips. He stopped arguing, wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her back. Dean grinned across the table at Tania’s aunt. He guessed that was one way to reassure someone.

“My name’s Marilyn, Dean,” she said, looking at him and not out the window. “No need to call me Ma’am.”

“Well thanks Marilyn, I needed this,” he said raising the mug and draining the last of the soup. She went to the stove and refilled it for him.

“Now, what’s this Tania says about you getting dragged down to hell and popping up at Cape Reinga?”

She made it sound so normal. Outside Dean watched Tania and her guy still kissing in the patch of light. Slowly they turned and walked, one forwards, one backwards, towards a smaller building a few meters away from the house.

As they disappeared into the shadows Dean felt a stab of jealousy. Their familiarity, their easiness, was hard to watch. He remembered piggy-backing Sam home from school, how his stupidly big feet had swung only a foot above the ground before Dean was prepared to declare him too heavy.

He looked up and found Marilyn eyeing him, like all his secrets had just marched across his face waving pompoms.

“Honey,” she said, her voice coffee dark, and he kind of liked the way she called him that, “I can see you’ve been to hell and back. And possibly more than once is my guess.”

He put on his best polite boy face. _Where was Sam when he needed him?_ “Marilyn, I don’t mean to be rude, but what I really need is to call my broth–” his voice cracked.

Marilyn pulled an incongruous pink cell phone out of her nightdress pocket and handed it over. She made Dean get down the heavy phone book down from the top of the kitchen cupboards, and she looked up the international dialing code for him.

His heart was pounding as he dialed, but the call clicked immediately into a computerized message – _this phone is either off or outside the coverage area._ Dean felt cold. “Marilyn, crazy question. Do you have email?”

“Sure do, although it’s pretty slow thanks to those Telecom bastards.” She pushed herself up and ambled away down the dark hallway, coming back a minute later with a battered old laptop.

“Wireless.” She winked. He opened it up, watching bemused as she leaned over him to type her password. He felt sure it was dirty.

Minutes passed as they waited for it to start up, for Marilyn’s home page to load. Dean logged in to his email… and waited some more, trying not to scream.

There was a 34-hours-old email from Sam. _if you get this, dean. please. just reply._

_Fuck._ Dean felt like he would shake apart if he let himself feel anything. So he replied, emailed Sam his whereabouts, said he’d figure out a way home, and left it at that. He didn’t say any of the things he wanted to say. He couldn’t even think them. Marilyn watched him, but she waited a while to speak.

“Is your brother the one who did this Dean? The one who brought you back?” Her voice was soft.

“Yeah.” Dean rubbed the back of his head. “Marilyn…” He couldn’t finish, so he stood up and rinsed his cup, putting it to dry in the dish rack.

She let it go, and beckoned him to follow her down the hall, stopping outside a small room with homemade bunks built into the wall. The top bunk was just bare slats, but the bottom one was made up with a fat pillow and a knitted blanket tucked in tightly.

“We’ll talk in the morning, Dean.” It didn’t sound optional. “Once you’ve had some rest. Bathroom’s down the hall; coffee’s under the sink if you’re up before me.”

She shushed him before he could thank her and went down the hall to another room, closing the door. He lay down on the bunk. _Sam was alive._ He let himself feel it, and his whole body flooded with relief.

++

He dreamed of Sam as a ten year old. Like a beanstalk, all legs and arms he’d been, his hair a soft mop, bleached by the sun. At fourteen Dean was already stocky, already laying muscle down on his bones. He’d loved to ruffle Sam’s hair, pull his head in against his chest – half a hug, half a lock. A few more years and Sam was too tall for that.

The dream was a jumble of good memories, just snatches of hotels and rented houses, threadbare couches and old fridges that made high-pitched buzzing sounds, the forbidden taste of cold beer when Dad was away, the smell of mac and cheese. It was a good dream, right up until the black blood started streaming from Sam’s eyes, right up until Dean’s body was pulled downwards by a thousand slippery hands, the sea closing like a whirlpool over his head.

When he woke up the smell of the sea filled the room.

++

Dean waited until he heard voices before getting up. It was still early, there was no sun, but his room was full of pre-dawn light, filtering through the faded curtains.

He threw the borrowed clothes on again and padded down the hall on his bare feet. Tania’s boyfriend looked up when he poked his head into the kitchen. He grinned and got up from the table, extending a hand to Dean.

“Tama,” he said. Dean gripped his hand and grinned back. The guy was huge, with a head of wavy black hair. Dean reckoned Tama could take him without much trouble, hunter or not.

“Dean. Uh, thanks for the clothes.”

“No worries, mate.”

Tania smiled up at him from where she had a newspaper spread over the table. Marilyn was at the stove, deep-frying something. Dean went over to her, intending to say thanks again, but this time she shut him up by handing him a cup of steaming hot coffee. He sipped. It was black and bitter and perfect.

“Sit,” she ordered.

“Better do what you’re told,” said Tania without raising her head.

Dean sat and a few minutes later Marilyn plonked a plate down in front of him. On it was a paper towel and what looked like a very large, misshapen doughnut, smothered in butter and something that looked a bit like maple syrup. It smelled like heaven.

“Eat,” said Marilyn.

Dean did. “Oh god. Oh, oh… _oh god,”_ were his first coherent words. He closed his eyes and gave into the experience fully. When he was finished he opened them again. “What…?”

“Fried bread,” said Tama, “only way to start the day.”

“No good for the hips of course,” Tania added, slapping hers ruefully.

“Those are childbearing hips my girl, and you better make use of what the Good Lord gave you before it’s too late,” said Marilyn with a snap in her voice. To Dean’s intense joy, she threw some more of the doughnut things into the big pot of oil as she spoke. The sizzle filled the room.

“Yes, Aunty,” said Tania, rolling her eyes at Dean.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her, Aunty,” said Tama.

Tania slapped him and went back to her newspaper.

Outside the door three dogs were lying on the grass watching them, and beyond them Dean saw the field they were in was part of a valley surrounded by hills, a lip of sun painting the tips of them white gold in the distance.

++

The day grew hotter and hotter. The air-conditioning on the bus was non-existent and by the time Sam got out of it at the bus station in Whangarei he was desperate for a cold shower.

He shouldered his duffel instead and went into the first café he saw. It was a Starbucks, and one frappe-something – cold, delicious and mock-worthy – later, Sam had managed to hack into the network of a trusting local business whose password was set to ‘password1’.

As his email opened he felt sick with fear. What if. What if he’d made a mistake, done something wrong, messed up the ritual, failed somehow? It was the most complicated thing he’d ever tried – bending all the rules, patching together different bits of lore – no precedent, no guarantee – one last, hopeless attempt.

What if Dean hadn’t survived? He could be in hell now, burning in hell, while Sam sat in Starbucks on a sunny day with a ridiculous drink. The little watch rotated on the screen with agonizing slowness.

But finally a message popped up from hotchicksrule99@gmail.com, sent in the middle of the night.

His hands shaking, he fired an email back. _Dean. Stay put. I’m here. I’m coming to get you._

He closed his eyes, let his head fall into his hands. He was so happy it hurt; it ached everywhere, like blood flowing back into dead veins, air into dead lungs.

++

They pulled up in the same car park where Tania had taken him in the dead of night. Dean had ridden in the front with Marilyn, and Tania and Tama in the back with two of the dogs.

They followed Marilyn down the path to the lighthouse and around behind it to stand on the grass bluff, looking down at where Dean had scrambled up the day before.

He saw in his mind the figures on the ridge, heard them wailing, crying into the wind. He breathed in and was overwhelmed by the stench of dead water, the black swirl of it covering his head, drowning him. He steadied himself and forced it all away.

The point looked gorgeous in the sun, the land falling away steeply, flowing into two rocky promontories, the larger one leading in to the smaller. Dean saw that the cliffs on the left fell to a wide flat beach that stretched behind them up the rim of the land for miles. On the other side the craggy rocks fell directly into the sea, just like he remembered, and high above the water, clinging to the side of the cliff, was the tree. It looked tiny now, spindly and fragile, like it could slip down into the waves at any moment, but Dean remembered how strong it was, how firmly its roots were woven into the rock.

Marilyn had walked forward a little, her eyes trained out to the sea, and Tama and Tania watched her silently. Even the dogs slunk around and settled quietly, lifting their heads into the wind.

She took the bottle from around her neck and bent down, pouring the black powder out in a line between them and the point. It trickled down into the grass.

Then she straightened up and turned to look at Dean. She looked older than she had that morning in the kitchen. The harsh midday sun picked out the deep lines on her face and the white strands in her hair. Her eyes looked darker, and there was no hint of humor in the curve of her lips.

She looked back out at the ocean and began to sing. Her voice was quiet to begin with, wavering, but soon it gained in strength. Dean felt his body chill, the blood slow down in his veins as he listened. There was no rhythm to the song, her voice rose and fell in patterns he couldn’t follow; it seemed to come from deep in her chest, from beneath her in the earth, up through her bare feet planted firmly in the grass. He couldn’t understand the words, the language a warm tumble of vowels and soft consonants, centuries blurring together in the sound.

Marilyn sang for a long time. After a while he closed his eyes, swaying in the wind. He felt Tania and Tama next to him, doing the same. He could smell the sea on the wind, but now it smelled light and fresh.

When her voice fell for the last time and the sound had died away from the air around them, Dean opened his eyes. The sun had lowered a little to the west, and Marilyn had turned and was looking at him, herself again, her face covered in wet streaks.

She walked towards him, all five-foot-nothing of her, her whole body strung with fierce emotion, and she pulled his face down to hers and pressed her nose to his.

After a while she pulled back, still holding his head. “I don’t know what your brother did. I have no idea how this happened, how you happened,” she poked him in the chest, “but it’s good. It’s right.”

He wanted to thank her, to say something embarrassingly cheesy like because of her song he felt like he was part of the world again, but she released his head and threw him a saucy look. “Don’t you dare, boy. And you’ll be staying with us until he gets here. No arguments.”

She led them back to the car, the dogs running and leaping now, Tama with his arm around Tania.

++

The next bus was hours away so Sam bought a map and hired a car from a dirt-cheap firm called Rent-A-Dent. He got a big old car called a Holden, with bench seats, and a V6 engine. It was a hideous yellow, and it made him think of Dean.

++

Later that night Dean and Tania sat on the steps of the house, watching the sun go down and drinking beer. Beer tasted good wherever you were in the world, Dean was pleased to discover. Tama had taken Marilyn into Kaitaia for Saturday night bingo. Apparently she was the bingo queen. Dean could believe it. The beer was ice cold but he was still warm all over from getting Sam’s email. It had been sitting there in his inbox when they returned from the point.

In the quiet Tania explained to him how, after death, the spirits of the iwi, the people, travel north to Cape Reinga on their journey to the afterlife. As they come to the end of the land they turn and remember living in the world of light, they remember the people they’ve loved. They are overcome with sadness and wail a ghostly song on the wind, using shards of rock to tear at their own skin. They continue down the broken ridge until they reach the Reinga, the jumping-off point at the tip of the land. Here is the pohutakawa tree, as old as time, its roots seeking down into the raging sea. The spirits descend along the roots, under the sea and into the Gates of the Hereafter, welcomed home by a thousand-strong choir of the dead.

Dean let her words wash over him in the slowly falling dark, fingering the healing scratches on his forearms.

“Dean,” she said finally, looking out at the fading sky, “Aunty doesn’t really know what your brother did. But she says he must have convinced our spirit world you were iwi – convinced _your_ spirit you were iwi – so you would follow our pathway to the afterlife. And then somehow he caught you before you could climb down into hell, and dragged you back.” Tania shivered.

Fear curled tightly around Dean for a few moments, but the ghosts remained at bay. All he could hear on the wind were a few lonely birds and the trickle of a stream behind the house.

They talked about music (tastes in common: Metallica, The Stooges,) about Tama (she didn’t want babies, she wanted to move to Auckland and go to business school,) about siblings (gotta love them even when you hate them,) and about beer (good, always).

Tania told him the black powder Marilyn wore around her neck was made from ground up shards of rock from the point. “She thinks it keeps evil spirits away, along with a splash of holy water on the doorstep. Who knows if it works? Aunty’s a bit of a maverick.”

“Probably works,” said Dean.

It’d gotten dark and they’d fallen silent when faint headlights appeared in the distance at the end of the long dirt driveway. It could be Marilyn and Tama returning and Dean refused to think too much about it – but a few minutes or a hundred years later, Sam drove up to the house.

Dean watched him get out of the car, his door creaking open and slamming with a thud. He stood up, stepped forward, and Sam walked right up to meet him, looked hard into his eyes, and then pulled him into a hug.

++

They slept that night in the bunks – actual sleep – Marilyn had found a mattress for the top one and given Sam a sleeping bag. She’d returned from bingo, triumphant, at eleven o’clock at night, taken one look at Sam and fed him heartily, ignoring all his protests. In the dead of night Dean had woken, the ghosts marching relentlessly down the ridge in his mind, but the sound of Sam’s breathing above him was enough to send him back to sleep.

Marilyn didn’t ask Sam any questions. She told them both bluntly in the morning that she no longer wanted to know the whys or wherefores of how Sam had rescued Dean because it was obvious they had a job to do – and she wasn’t going to stand in the way.

Dean looked over at Sam as they sat at her breakfast table. It was Sunday morning. His skin was golden in the sunlight, light glinting on three days growth on his jaw, and his eyes were clear. It was hard to look away from him – it was hard to stop words he could never take back from spilling out of his mouth.

They left around noon, the dogs following them up the drive, the feel of hugs and kisses still fresh on their skin.

“Thanks Marilyn,” Dean had finally managed to say.

She’d given him a half-smile, rueful and kind. “You’ve got nothing to thank me for. Now be on your way.”

++

They took the long drive down the neck of the North Island in a lazy stretch, stopping for gas and ‘fish ‘n’ chips’, which Tania had made Dean promise he’d try. They inhaled them lying in the grass, the car parked on the shoulder of the road just over from the shop, wiping their greasy fingers on the newspaper they had been wrapped in, and sharing a bottle of coke.

Sam rolled up the remains and pitched them into a rusty trashcan. He looked over at Dean, a question in his eyes. Dean shook his head, tried on a grin. He couldn’t face talking. Not yet.

He did let Sam drive though. Sam hired the car after all, and driving on the left is plain wrong, it’s the devil’s work, that’s what it is.

++

It was hot in the car, so when they passed a sign saying beach Sam pulled off the highway and followed a winding road all the way to the coast.

The Pacific spread out in front of them, empty and wild, the beach stretching deserted in both directions. The sand was warm under Dean’s feet. The red-flower trees – pohuta-something – leaned over and spread their shade behind him. He walked down to where the high-tide line was clogged with kelp and the inner twists of thousands of spiral shells. He felt lighter here, on the wrong side of the planet. He felt weightless.

He looked over at Sam lying full length on the sand in his boxers on the ratty old towel Tania had donated to them, trying to catch some rays. He knew Sam would never do it if they weren’t completely alone. His body looked both familiar and completely unknown.

Dean stripped down and threw himself into the surf with a wild yell. Laughed and shouted at Sam to stop being a woman. Sam flipped him off and the sea picked Dean up when he wasn’t looking and dumped him in the shallows. He coughed and spluttered on his stomach in the water, his fingers digging into the sand beneath him, hollows deepening under his hands as the wave ran back to the sea.

Sam’s shadow fell over him, offering a hand, and he took it and used it to pull him off balance, dunking him. Sam was up in a second, laughing and spluttering, and after that there was no mercy – it was _on._

++

A few days before the end; when the hounds were already circling; when the scratches were already appearing on Dean’s body – seams of blood opening on his skin; when the screams were already pulling him under; when the only thing keeping him in the world was Sam’s love, Sam’s arms, Sam’s body holding him back: Dean had told him what was twisting in his mind.

He’d told Sam he wanted to be more than his brother, that he’d loved Sam his whole life and no longer knew how to stop – how to stay on the right side of that line anymore. He’d said he was glad he was dying, glad he was leaving, because he couldn’t promise to love Sam any less – to hold back any longer, one single day longer than the contract allowed.

Sam hadn’t told him he’d had one last desperate plan. They’d tried so many and failed, and Sam had obviously not been able to bear offering Dean any more false hope, any more hollow promises. He’d kept one idea, one plan, one desperate gamble for last and, somehow, it’d paid off.

But he’d held Dean in his arms for three days and three nights at the end – neither of them even able to crack a joke about it – and in the breath on his neck, in the strength at his back, Dean had heard, _me too, Dean. Me too._

++

They made it to Auckland by midnight and booked into a grimy motel, high up on Queen Street. Sammy fired up the laptop and got them flights home with the credit cards he’d got just for the job.

Dean stood in the shower. He leaned against the wall and let the water pound his shoulders till they were numb. He changed into his own clothes, the clothes Sam had brought him – the clothes Sam might have had to burn, or give away – and got a cold chill all over his body, in spite of the clouds of steam.

He leaned against the bathroom door and watched Sam sitting on his bed flicking channels. There seemed to be about six, several of them fuzzy. Sam settled back to watch some music show, his body taking up all the space on the narrow bed.

Dean sat heavily on the other bed, facing inwards. The bedspread was a lurid fluffy blue – it made his skin look washed out. The curtains were patterned with blue diamonds to match – the wallpaper a dull coppery red. A screen made of large metal squares concealed the door, everything simultaneously loud and run down, the light switches cracked and yellowed; it felt like home.

Dean was so scared of getting this wrong – his throat too tight, his scalp prickling.

“Sammy.” His voice was unsteady.

Sam looked up.

“I’ve slept in the same room as you most of my life – hell – half the time it was the same bed.” It came out sounding rehearsed. His hands turned into fists on his thighs.

“Fuck it.” He stood up, Sam watching him closely, and suddenly he couldn’t stand it. He walked out of the room, slamming the door.

He walked up the street, past tiny Chinese, Japanese and Korean restaurants, past grubby looking internet cafes, past Karaoke bars and dives offering sex toys and massage, and found a graveyard at the top. It stretched across both sides of a big intersection and under a motorway overpass. He crossed the road and followed the graveyard down under the stone struts of the bridge.

Deep under the bridge the graves got older and older, the headstones crumbling and fallen over, the inscriptions worn away. He sat down on one and as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw a couple of kids, teenagers, watching him from under the bridge. They sat in a jumble of cardboard boxes, wrapped in dirty sleeping bags.

A boy’s voice called out, “Go away mate. This is our patch.”

He went.

~

Back in their room it was dark and Sam lay quietly on his side, as though he was asleep. Dean knew he wasn’t. He returned to his position on the other bed.

“I don’t know what we are to each other anymore,” he said quietly. “You’re my brother, you’ll always be my brother.” Sam rolled over onto his back. Dean’s voice dropped to a whisper, his eyes to the floor, “But we’ve both come back from the dead – we’ve brought each other back from the dead.”

He looked up, and Sam’s eyes were wide. He was waiting with his whole body drawn tight, waiting to hear what Dean would say. Like for once he didn’t already know.

Dean looked away. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. “I don’t know what that means, Sam. It all gets mixed up in my head. There _is_ no one else. I can’t…”

Dean stood up. He made an abortive move towards Sam, but Sam kept utterly still. As though everything could break.

“Sam… Sam.” Dean could feel the strain on his face, the tightness crawling across his skull, the hounds circling again, drawing close around both of them this time.

“Sam… I can’t stop thinking about you.” Dean’s ears rang with his own words, the room vibrating around them.

Sam stood up and there were barely two inches between them. He lifted his hand and touched the side of Dean’s face, just his fingertips.

He stared down at Dean, his eyes full of fear, full of promises, and his other hand rose to rest on Dean’s waist, warm, just above his jeans. Dean couldn’t move. He wanted to pull away from Sam, slam out of the room and go to an all-night bar. Come back in the morning and pretend nothing had changed.

But Sam leaned in until his forehead touched Dean’s. His breathing hitched. His hand on Dean’s jaw slid around to grip the back of his neck.

Dean could smell him, breath him in, that warm Sam smell that invaded his life.

Sam’s head fell forward until he was breathing against Dean’s mouth. His eyes fell shut, eyelashes black smudges on his cheeks. His hand was hot on Dean’s neck, his hips nudging closer, their thighs brushing, his bare feet between Dean’s on the threadbare carpet.

“Fuck, _Sam_…” it was barely a breath; Dean’s heart was pounding so loud he could hardly think.

But he tipped his head up a tiny bit, Sam’s hand slipping into his hair, and pressed his mouth to Sam’s.

++

Later, much later, he knows that Sam’s whole body tastes like the sea.

++

Their flight’s at sunset the next day. They make it to Auckland Airport in time to hand over their Rent-A-Dent at the office there. Sam watches Dean pat its generous yellow flank goodbye, still warm from the sun.

They check in, and Dean goes off to buy coffee. Sam sits at one of the tables by the big windows making a playlist on his laptop. It’s for Dean, and when he’s done he’ll sync the ipod and Dean can have classic rock all the way home. Hum along all he wants to.

Sam’s whole body is full of the memory of Dean’s. The slip and slide of his skin, the warmth of his breath, the feel of his hands, rough and gentle, uncertain and fucking confident all at the same time. He can still feel the rush of holding Dean down, the physical shock of Dean’s strength above him. They’d stayed in the room all day – everything too much – hardly able to meet each other’s eyes one moment and cracking jokes and insults like brothers the next. But now they’ve crossed the line he knows he can never go back.

Dean’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Dean comes over with the coffee just as the lights come up on the runway outside. He sits down in that way he has, his body declaring the space inadequate. Twisting sideways, putting a leg up. The familiarity of it makes Sam’s chest hurt.

Dean cocks an eye at him as though he knows what Sam’s thinking, then coughs and looks out the window instead. He’s still looking out the window a few minutes later, watching a plane taxi out to the runway.

“This isn’t what I wanted for you, Sam.” His voice is quiet, but Sam hears.

Sam thinks for a minute about everything that’s between them, everything they are to each other. “It’s not what I wanted for you either,” he replies, matter-of-fact.

He unplugs the ipod and hands it to Dean.

It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The mythology used in this story is based (with some fictional license) on the Maori mythology surrounding Cape Reinga. I haven't been there since I was a kid, so my descriptions of the landscape are based on old memories. Marilyn is purely fictional and her particular combination of ideas and practices was invented for this story.


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